Re: [Xen-devel] Re: What is more secure? HVM or PV ?

["David Pilger" <pilger.david@xxxxxxxxx>]

> For PV:
> The explicit hypercall API would be one possible attack vector - exploiting
> any bugs in Xen.  The memory mapping interface could also be an attack vector
> (including both the paravirtualised and various shadowing code paths).
>
> PV also could be attacked in principle via the frontend / backend drivers - if
> the backend driver could be compromised and made to execute arbitrary code
> (or even write abitrary code to dom0's filesystem / swapfile for later
> executation) then it would be possible to take over the whole machine.
>
> The PV components have been in place for longer and have probably received
> more scrutiny.  The HVM components are rather complex and have received, I
> think, less eyeballing.  I'd guess (and it is really a guess) that I'd have
> more confidence in PV from a security point of view, but that's definitely
> not to say that there's anything specifically *wrong* with the HVM code, just
> that it's less mature.
I agree, I think that because the PV API is also exposed to HVMs
(PV-on-HVM), we can conclude that HVMs are theoretically less secure,
becuase they have more attack vectors.

David.

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